iJIvISHA MITCHE^EvI. SCIENTIFIC SOCIBXY. l5 



Thoug-h you would expect a very roug-h hilly country 

 on the West you do not find it so. The slope on the east- 

 ern side of the Blue Ridg-e is much steeper than that of 

 the West. West of the Blue Ridg-e we have a very larg-e 

 valley bounded on the East by the Blue Ridg-e and on the 

 West by the Great Smoky Mountains. This valley runs 

 northeast and southwest between the two mountain chains 

 and composes the mountainous districts of North Caro- 

 lina. 



This area has principally crystalline schists and gneisses 

 with patches of congflomerates, sandstones, and shales and 

 limestone. Both the Smokies on the West and the Blue 

 Ridg-e on the Kast presents an anticlinal structure; the 

 latter often having- its monoclinal member absent. The 

 area was in all probability once covered by an eastern ex- 

 tension of the Paleozoic rocks of East Tennessee, the 

 sandstones of the western district being* probably Cam- 

 brian (Chilhowee or Potsdam), the patches of limestone 

 probably Silurian, and the g-rits and shales farther 

 East possibly Carboniferous. ^ I assume that the fold- 

 ing- that produced the Appalachian System was, as 

 in Pennsylvania, rapid enoug-h to deform the river systems. 

 It g-ave rise to four g-reat systems in North Carolina. 

 The first we may call the Deep River syncline. It had 

 its head in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, on the 

 North Carolina line and ran northeast into Virgfinia. The 

 second had its head in Caldwell County, North Carolina 

 ran east of northest and joined the first in Virg-inia. 

 This one may be called the Dan River syncline. The 

 third had its head in Catawba County, North Carolina, 

 and ran south into South Carolina. This may be called 

 the King's Mountain syncline. The fourth, which we 

 may call the Ashe . ^ syncline was rather a canoe-shaped 

 basin with a length of about 150 miles and a width of 20 



1. Professor Collier Cobb's Lectures on General Critical Geology, 

 1893-94; see also Cobb's Map of North Cs^rolina, 1887, 



